Playing with CenterIM, a command line instant messenger

When working in the terminal, I use a lot CenterIM, an instant messenger client. While Finch (Pidgin on ncurse) is more feature-rich than CenterIM and has almost all the plugins that Pidgin has, I prefer CenterIM because it has a very clean interface, offering you just what you need to communicate:

-a contact list

-a chat window

-a log window (I find it quite informative)

There is one function in Pidgin that I like a lot and that is the “Pounce” option (being announce with a pop-up when an user log off, log in or some other event you select). After reading the CenterIM Documentation, I found a very simple solution to implement this feature to my favorite command line IM client. So here it is: